Saturday, July 11, 2015

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.Henry David Thoreau

The river Aulne next to the house

Le Bleu nouveau est arrivé...

The very first blue (and green) shades

some pre-dyed, some dyed twice, some will be re-dyed and re-dyed again and again...

using Woad and Rhubarb

What happens when you soak some onion skins in rainwater ?

Dyer's Chamomille (Anthemis tinctoria)

Jardin des Simples - Bellegarde en Diois

I've just started a fermentation vat with these flower's

Dyer's chamomille or golden marguerite is a perennial plant with aromatic bright green-bluish foliage and yellow daisy-like flowers.
It has no culinary and only limited medicinal uses. However, the flowers produce excellent yellow and gold-orange.
It has been used as a dye for a very long time, it provides the buff in Turkish carpets but in Europe dyers preferred weld instead as yellow dye.
The leaves give a light green dye.

When fermented in sugar or honey water, Ash leaves produce an alcoholic drink called Frenette or cidre de frêne. Frenette is a traditional drink fallen into oblivion since the sixties. However, it is still made by a few grandmothers in the countryside. This drink, which taste a bit like apple cider was already brewed by our ancestors the Gauls. Each region had its own recipe. Slightly alcoholic (2 °) and slightly sweet, this drink is not fattening. It is drunk fresh as lemonade.

The Gauls were Celtic peoples inhabiting Gaul in the Iron Age and the Roman period. The Gaul region corresponds to what is now Belgium, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Western Germany and Northern Italy.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

On 24 June,
"La nuit de la Saint Jean" as it is called here in France, isn't celebrated
like it was in the old days. Except in some places like here in Brittany
where it has remained a living tradition. And so it is that the Old cult of the Fire is still existent. Fire, for millennia was honoured as a source of
universal life.

Old postcard, Tantad de St Jean du Doigt

In many
Breton villages they still have the tradition of lighting a large bonfire
around midsummer.

This fire
is called "Tantad" in Breton. The firewood is collected one month in
advance, it consists mainly of dried gorse (Ulex europaeus) which grows
everywhere here in Brittany.

Picture taken a few years ago in St Jean du Doigt

just before lighting the fire

It used to
go like this:

After the fire
was lit, the villagers, all in festive attire, stand around the fire and began
to perform all kinds of dancing and singing. Children were not allowed to
participate and could only look at the fire through the windows of their houses, because it was mainly a celebration of adulthood, of love and fertility.
When the fire had diminished, tough young men and brave young women jumped happily
over the glowing embers. The older village women each took a piece of coal and threw
it into the well to cleanse the water for the whole year to come. Towards the
end, bystanders threw a small cobblestone in the cooling fire, this stone was
called a "anaon" . And thus ended the party and everyone went to
sleep. In the morning, the villagers went to see their "anaon" stone,
because during the night the spirits came to turn over the stones of the people
who would die in the following year! The cooled ash was then spread on the
fields in order to promote the fertility of the soil.

Or at least
that's how it used to be done. Now it is a popular festival linked to the still
very strong Christian faith.

Tantad de St Jean du Doigt

Tantad de St Jean du Doigt

But "la
fête de la St Jean" was not only about bonfires, it was also a good time
to collect some medicinal herbs. The next day, the people who knew about these
things, with bare feet, still groggy from the previous night and with a golden
sickle in their hand went to pick the herbs. To ward off demons and to cure
fevers. St John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) of course, but also vervain
(Verbena officinalis), the sacred plant of the Celts. It was picked while singing
a mysterious song, a very old charm formula, called "Verven-Dieu" but
nobody knows what it actually means anymore.

About Me

Welcome !
I'm Marylene Lynx.
This blog is about my knit and crochet designs and my experiments with herbal dyes. It’s also about my relationship with Nature and Earth.
The key words that define my life and work are: colour, symbol, rhythm and femininity.
I'm a Belgian living in Brittany, France.